Concealed Carry on College Campuses

Ian Bogost, “The armed campus in the anxiety age,”The Atlantic, 9 Mar. 2016. “Guns arrive on campus today in this context of massive, wholesale collegiate anxiety…. A concealed-carry campus becomes a campus in which everyone carries a potential gun. And the potential gun is far more powerful than the real gun, because it both issues and revokes a threat all at once.”

Pamela Colloff, “The Reckoning,”Texas Monthly, March 2016. “How does a bullet change a life?” Fifty years after the Texas Tower shooting, Colloff follows the life of Claire Wilson, who — at the age of 18 — was shot by Charles Whitman, at the University of Texas at Austin.

Firmin Debrabander, “How guns could censor college classrooms,”The Atlantic, 4 Mar. 2016. “If students suspect that neighbors in the classroom may be armed, this may make them less inclined to engage them in frank and open discussion, on potentially uncomfortable or challenging topics. Guns speak; they send a message, which, gun owners and gun rights advocates readily admit, is something like this: Don’t mess with me—be careful—I am armed; I know how to use my weapon, and am prepared to do so if need be.“

Editors, “The Concealed Carry Fantasy,”The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2015. “Clearly, concealed carry does not transform ordinary citizens into superheroes. Rather, it compounds the risks to innocent lives, particularly as state legislatures, bowing to the gun lobby, invite more citizens to venture out naïvely with firearms in more and more public places, including restaurants, churches and schools.”

Steven J. Friesen, “I’m a professor in Texas and I’m worried about students who can now carry guns in my class.”PRI, 18 Aug. 2016. A detailed look at how the Texas legislature pushed guns onto Texas university campuses, the ideology behind that move, and how it affects teaching. Of the ideology behind campus carry, he writes: “the campus carry movement has, it seems, a different ideology for higher education. The underlying motivation is that traditional authority must be maintained and, in the end, disagreement is resolved by force, not by debate. For this ideology, critical thinking is a potential threat to authority.”

Greg Hampikan, “When May I Shoot a Student?”New York Times, 27 Apr. 2014. “At present, the harshest penalty available here at Boise State is expulsion, used only for the most heinous crimes, like cheating on Scantron exams. But now that lethal force is an option, I need to know which infractions may be treated as de facto capital crimes.” Satire.

Julie Hawk, “Campus Gun Carry Will Ruin Social Justice in the Classroom.”Mamademics, 2 Mar. 2016. “Education, when done well, is about challenging students (and ourselves) to push the boundaries of our comfort zones, to let our minds go to places that scare us. Ultimately, the only way this works is if the classroom is a safe space…. How can I tell my students that the classroom is a safe space when it simply isn’t? How can I tell them that their mightiest weapons in the classroom are their pens when they’re wondering if the person sitting next to them has a concealed firearm?”

Susan Kemper and Ed Russell, “Professors address guns, safety at KU.”Lawrence Journal-World, 22 Apr. 2016. “We must address gun safety through education and training; we must reduce the risk of suicide and accidental shootings through a focus on mental health, anger management and peaceful ways to protest; we must restore a climate of trust, respect, tolerance and openness to diversity, inquiry and free speech. Without addressing these concerns, there is little here to defend — either with words or with guns.”

Nate Kreuter, “Concealed in Our Classrooms,”Inside Higher Ed, 12 Apr. 2016. “Most concealed-carry permit holders have not experienced combat and been trained how to fire accurately or judiciously in the heat of the moment. Unfortunately, the idea that citizen defenders will neutralize the mentally ill assailants who more and more routinely threaten campus safety is a fantasy. It is the boys’ dream of being a hero, but carried often by those who have not been taught how to act with heroism, as our military and law-enforcement personnel have been trained.”

Elise Langan, “Guns and Learning Don’t Mix,”Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 Apr. 2016. “It is hard enough to get students’ attention, but I’ll now be forced to compete with fixations on ‘Who’s packing?’ and ‘What are they packing?'”

Philip Nel, “Just a Shot Away,”Inside Higher Ed, 12 Apr. 2016. “Guns in the workplace make the already vulnerable even more vulnerable. Armed students make the free exchange of ideas less free. Of course, since the Kansas Board of Regents abridged state employees’ rights to freedom of speech back in 2013, we have come to accept the steady erosion of intellectual inquiry as a condition of working at Kansas universities. But guns only make this problem worse.”

Xavier Rotnofsky and Rohit Mandalapu, “How to Properly Implement Campus Carry,”Huffington Post, 15 Dec. 2015. “Some people are also angry by how much it’ll cost universities to enact campus carry, but those people aren’t seeing the many potential revenue streams on which universities can capitalize after implementation of the new policy. For example, universities can make Kevlar vests featuring the school’s colors and insignia to sell at orientation. Textbook companies can make textbooks heavier, with titanium-reinforced, bulletproof book covers.” Satire.

Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The Second Amendment itself, at the U.S. Govt. Printing Office (pdf). You’ll find the Second Amendment on page 13: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, District of Columbia v. Heller (554 US 570), U.S. Supreme Court, 26 June 2008 (pdf). “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Kansas Law

HB 2052: “An Act concerning firearms; dealing with the personal and family protection act” (2013). Concealed carry “shall not be prohibited in any state or municipal building unless such building has adequate security measures.” In other words, if a state building has adequate security (which is prohibitively expensive), then it can prohibit concealed carry. Otherwise, it cannot. Also: colleges and universities granted a four-year exemption.

Kansas Board of Regents’ “Frequently Asked Questions on Campus Carry in Kansas” (pdf, 20 April 2016). “No, an individual instructor cannot prohibit concealed carry in the instructor’s classroom, lab, or “private” office unless ASMs are provided on all public access entrances to the classroom, lab, office, or entire building in which these areas are located” (p. 4). ASM = “Adequate Security Measures,” which cost about $100,000 per building entrance. Also, “Universities should not ask housing applicants whether they intend to carry a concealed handgun on campus” (p. 9).

“Concealed carry does not transform ordinary citizens into superheroes. Rather, it compounds the risks to innocent lives”
— New York Times, 26 Oct. 2015

"A concealed-carry campus becomes a campus in which everyone carries a potential gun. And the potential gun is far more powerful than the real gun, because it both issues and revokes a threat all at once."
— "The Armed Campus in the Anxiety Age," The Atlantic, 9 Mar. 2016

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings”
— Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, District of Columbia vs. Heller (2008)